Just a follow-up in case anyone’s interested in the result of my experiment, mentioned above:
I spent several hours more or less actively doubting that the God of Abraham (and Niccolò) would turn my piece of bread into a lump of meat. And sure enough, He didn’t. I next spent some time doubting that Zeus would perform the miracle. Again, no results. I thought about a few other purported gods (among which, Odin, Ahura Mazda, Quetzalcoatl, Amaterasu, and Ra; I even tried Xenu and Ilúvatar), and serially doubted that each of them would do it; which, again, they didn’t. I next took my life in my hands and began doubting that any god at all would do it - realising that if the bread should turn into meat during that period I would be in no better position that I was to start with, having no idea which of the infinity of possible (or impossible) gods might have done it - I also figured that if whatever gods might be capable of the act were so reluctant to identify themselves, that this would have been the time to do it, and therefore the most likely time to expect that my bread would, in fact, change into meat. I, however, manfully maintained my doubt! Fortunately for my mental health, it is still, at the time of this writing, bread. Somewhat stale bread at this point. I’m calling an end the experiment now, and considering it one further item among the abundant evidence of spectacular existence failure among any and all gods.
You’re right! For some reason I didn’t even think to try either the Flying Spaghetti Monster (who, presumably, would have changed it into a delicious meat sauce rather than human heart…come to think of it, the idea that Catholics seriously believe they’re chowing down on human heart and blood worries me more than a little…) or the Invisible Pink Unicorn.
The idea of secession is not a universally accepted truth. In modern terms(I know you prefer the classical use) secession is a right-wing ideal, while the left-wing ideal is “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”
You’re right in saying anyone who doesn’t accept secession is not an anarchist, and I’d say there are a lot of false anarchists out there.
As recently as Lincoln, or even Theodore R, “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere” was a right-wing mindset, but in today’s terms it is decidedly leftist. And thats how they self describe, so I’m inclined to follow suit.
Ultimately, socialism is not about personal betterment, it is a crusade.
“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future”, seems more relevant after seeing this entire debate over the use of currently mutated anit-concepts & mis-uses of past words, vs. the use of the concepts original meanings & uses.
“Study the past if you would define the future” also seems to lend credence in not abandoning the original concepts & meanings, and cutting through anti-concepts & mis-used labels.
It was socialists who caused the shift anyways by labeling all their enemies as “right-wing.” A middle of the road movement has forced both the real left and real right onto the same side, and thus we get the chimera that is modern conservatism.
I think you’re wrong there. Why do you think Zeus would turn bread into human flesh ? Maybe his job is to turn bread into swans ? Also, I don’t see why only catholics should be ridiculed ? Protestants think the bible has divine origin ? The earth is 6000 years old ? Do I need to add anything else ?
I didn’t think he would - I doubted he would…correctly, as it turns out! [:)] (Of course the reason I doubted it would turn into human flesh, specifically, rather than swans or anything, is that Niccolò claimed (at least I assume that was his point) that some bread in Lanciano turned into human flesh, not swans, when the monk doubted. FWIW, I may not have mentioned it, but I was simuldoubting (simultaneously doubting) that it would turn into anything else, either…maybe that was my error?)
God doesn’t need to prove Himself to you. If you are not willing to take the dozens of miracles in Europe that could not be disproven by scientists and professors, then that’s just too bad.
I honestly do not know. I cannot tell what my life would be like if I had a different set of beliefs about religion. Maybe it would be better, maybe it would be worse, but I honestly can’t give a good enough answer in dialect.
The word “care” only seems to apply to human entities. I don’t know the emotions of God. I know He desires to be respected and worshipped, but to call it “care,” I don’tk now.
Do you have any theories as to why an all-powerful all-knowing God would create legions of flawed creatures and desire to be worshipped by them? Or is that mischaracterizing the Christian position?
What is “God”? How do you define, “God”? If “God” is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then ‘God’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
Well, I couldn’t resist since we’re well off-topic.
“Could not be disproven” is an entirely different thing than “has been proven”. You can’t disprove the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Russell’s Teapot, etc. Take your piece of heart tissue for example: assuming you believe the scientist they claim examined it is who they say he is, did an honest job, and found what they say he found, etc., and it really is a piece of human heart muscle and some blood, how do you know it’s the same piece of material that’s been there since 700? Even if it is the same, how do you know that it was previously a piece of bread? By far the most likely explanation is that the monk pulled a little sleight-of-hand to impress whomever was watching. But, of course, it’s impossible to prove it wasn’t a piece of bread, too - for the same reason you can’t disprove the teapot hypothesis. To believe something unless it’s “disproven” is really absurd (and the religious mind tends to continue to believe things for a considerable period of time even if they have been solidly disproven!)
Indeed. I’ve just finished rereading Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - a very interesting book in which he posits that up until approximately 3000 years ago humans were not conscious and acted on orders from hallucinated voices generated by the areas in the right hemisphere of the brain that parallel the speech centers (Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas) in the left hemisphere, and that these voices (and visual hallucinations, too) were what they knew as “gods”.
(In fact, it would be interesting to examine the impact of this hypothesis on praxeology, theories of the formation of the state, etc., if humans weren’t conscious and capable of acting in the Misesian sense - like animals, they presumably didn’t have rights, and the state would have arisen out of the hallucinated gods rather than bandits settling in to sustained robbery, or whatever theory of initial state formation…and what does that mean for modern man?)